Lord Ratner

Yeah, I kind of agree with lawman on this one, we have certainly unchained our fighting forces to destroy a specific enemy, but that enemy is not a nation. It's a military target It would be fascinating to see how it plays out if we did. Imagine targeting every power production facility in every major city of a developed enemy nation. Or targeting the waste water treatment plants, which there aren't many and they're not hardened. Then just wait to see what a metro area of millions looks like with no functional sewage system. I bet there are tons of horrifying options that are easily targeted.

Who's are they? The state? They do not have agency over their lives. I didn't call them property, but they just certainly are yours, while they are considered minors. In either case that's irrelevant to the point. Children further prove it. You can decide what they eat, but you can't decide to feed them too little. You can home school then, but you *must* educate them. Owning something has never given you absolute control over it in this country.

But that is literally what rules and laws are, drawing lines between two black and white positions. Why are people in the military allowed to murder, yet I cannot murder my neighbor for playing loud music? You are allowed to own property in a neighborhood, yet you are not allowed to cover it in toxic waste. But you are allowed to decide what type of grass you grow on it. But you aren't allowed to let the weeds grow too tall and become a breeding ground for mice. Your children are yours, and yet, like animals, you are not allowed to beat them. But you are allowed to punish them.

I agree with all that. I just think it's more likely that she was implying that all of the Trump supporters are mindless robotic cultists, rather than she actually thinks deprogramming is some sort of solution we should pursue. Just more of the basket of deplorables nonsense.

I have no love for Hillary Clinton, but listening to that quote in the actual interview with full context, it did not sound like she was actually suggesting it some sort of deprogramming regimen. She was expressing exasperation at a phenomenon that she does not understand, and does not know how to counter. That doesn't mean I believe in anything she's arguing, or even that I don't think they would use totalitarian means to get their way, but I'm also not doing to take what was clearly an off the cuff jesting remark as some sort of policy suggestion.

Wrong. They're too mad. In the hierarchy of concerns, classified document mishandling, treating women grossly (but not illegally), cheating on your marriages, lying about nearly everything in your past, or all the other things that Donald Trump does to distinguish himself as a human with little or no character, those things are all subordinate to being called a piece of shit, or a liar, or a rube, or being gaslit, or having your most foundational family values attacked, to be called a racist, or a sexist, you get the idea. American conservatives are furious. And furious people do not see nuance or reason. Until the thing that is making them furious is resolved, they are not going to get caught up in little details like what a miserable human being Donald Trump is. And since the exact same activists, politicians, famous people, and other progressive entities who rebranded the American conservative as some sort of hate spewing, idiotic, predatory, and privileged group are the ones now going after Donald Trump, there is a 0% chance that they are going to see the light. And you know what, the many shortcomings of Donald Trump are in fact very, very, very subordinate to the societal warfare that is being waged by the most privileged and unaccomplished in our country. I honestly don't know that I can vote for Donald Trump again, but there is no aspect where his re-election is worse for the country than what American progressives have done and are continuing to do. My primary concern is that his election will not make the problem any better, because Donald Trump also blinds liberal voters to what The Democratic party has become.

I think the number one threat to the Republican party right now, aside from the usual political machinations in Washington, is the inability of conservative voters to deal with the cognitive dissonance of appreciating the policy successes of Donald Trump contrasted with the fact that he is in fact a piece of shit as a human being.

"I have accepted personal responsibility for my actions by pleading no contest to the remaining reduced charges." I'm not sure not-denying is the same as "accepting responsibility" 😂🤣 She seems like a pain in the ass.

The Slow Mo Guys video on backdrafts is one of their best https://youtu.be/ZyCCWuO0mQo?si=sVyamMSgJPWEvnQm

He answered that question: So for the tanker, if we're talking basic stick and rudder and keeping radio calls, trimming, airport operations, airspace navigation, and other fundamentals honed, then the cheaper smaller plane is a better value. You also have to be competent in the specific landing and handling characteristics of the tanker, and in that case the lowest level and cheapest plane is the tanker. Or perhaps you could have a few tanker variants that don't have any of the refueling systems maintained and it's just a pattern monkey. But the premise is sound. And yeah, the simulator is adequate for a huge percentage of this, which is why the airliners do not train in the aircraft (non-revenue), ever. For fighters you are obviously going to have less capacity to use the simulator, but there's no reason why an F-22 pilot couldn't practice in a much cheaper jet aircraft. Got forbid we actually ran acquisitions in an integrated, forward thinking way, you would buy trainer aircraft that are vastly cheaper yet handle similarly to the MWS's. The flying I did in the T6 improved my KC135 flying far more than my KC135 flying improved my T6 flying.

Okay, yes, this person is clearly not working 911 part time to pay for their mensa membership. But. If you're the pilot that just ejected out of a fighter aircraft and you're sitting in some guy's house calling 911, don't you think you would maybe take a little bit more control over the conversation rather than answer stupid questions that only make the person on the other end more confused? This guy is 47 years old and in the military, so ostensibly has some sort of leadership experience under his belt. If you can't lead one moron into sending an ambulance without a 15 minute discussion about how ejections work, it might not be the 911 operator that's the problem.

"She looks like she wears underwear with dick holes in them" 😂🤣

You needed a catastrophic withdrawal from a 20-year-war to distrust a 4-star?

There are few things douchier than calling yourself a doctor when you aren't in the medical field.

You're there, and your work puts you in a much better position to know, but it's very hard to imagine the response you suggest. Especially considering the history. This is a real question: Are there still reputable groups that believe the pipelines were blown up by Russia? The public narrative seems to have settled on Ukraine-assisted-by-the-US/UK and then the story kinda faded. I'd expect the pro-Ukraine-support crowd (myself as one) to be talking about that more if there was still a credible argument that Russia did it. I remember you implied you saw or were told of very definitive evidence that it was Russia.

That sounds... diminished. Why doesn't the bomber Mafia run the AF anymore?

It was still a bad analogy. The girl at the party made decisions that ignore the reality of the situation she's in. She did not show up with a bucket of date-rape drugs and casually leave them scattered around the room, thinking it wouldn't ever affect her. There's a big difference between questionable *personal* decision making, and making the world worse for other people, then having that come back to bite you. The girl in the sexy dress never deserves to be raped. The politician who fucked up their city for everyone else absolutely deserves to be mugged.

Exact timing? Dunno. We are at a fork in the road between an asset-value-crash and reigniting inflation. I have no clue what the Fed picks, but I don't expect them to let the government go insolvent until they have no choice. That means a new tea-party wave of politicians replacing the entrenched incumbents and forcing the Fed to fix their mess. That too will take time. In the short term, they can't stop inflation and protect the government/stock market/investor class. These are now mutually exclusive interests. So if you want to invest in something, keep an eye on commodities. The government can't control the price of oil, copper, etc. But the safe answer right now is to shovel your money into short-term treasuries. No risk from rate-changes and a pretty good yield right now. Whatever you do, don't sit on cash right now. When the Fed starts cutting rates, move your money into something that will benefit from inflation. Fun Fact: Because the Fed has increased their balance sheet so spectacularly, the only way they are able to keep rates above ~0% is by directly paying the banks and money-market funds to not put their money into treasuries (which would push up the prices and lower the yields/rates). So as we speak, the Fed is paying the banks billions to sit on the reserves that the Fed forced them to take in the first place. If you don't think the system is rigged, your aren't paying attention. But I don't think this madness can go on for too long.

Yeah, not going to be great for him. A few more interesting stats: Right now, for the first time ever, the cost of new homes is the same as existing homes. This is an artifact of the reality that existing homeowners (as a group) never *have to* sell, but homebuilders do. So the rate increases have killed off the existing home sales (too expensive for buyers, and most sellers can't/won't trade a 3% mortgage for a 7% mortgage), leaving new homes as the "best" option. Homebuilders are doing mortgage buydowns to incentivize sales without lowering prices. If they lower prices, that sets the new value for all remaining homes (even the localities would hate this, as it would depress property taxes. Everyone is aligned against the homebuyer). So they pay the bank you drop the mortgage rate, 5.5% seeming to be the magic number for a lot of buyers. If we operate on the reality that most homebuyers base their budget on the monthly payment, not the home price, then a drop from 7.5% to 5.5% has the same effect as dropping the price of the home by ~19%. How do you think the market would react if the narrative for the housing market had a 20% loss of value in one year nation wide? Investor buying is falling off a cliff. The average cap rate (profit) on renting these homes out is now a percent or so below the risk-free rate of treasuries. It's about equal with the 10-year note. So... run a portfolio of thousands of homes that require maintenance, management, and renters, with the risk of losing value if the market drops, or just buy US treasuries and sit on them? Easy math... Home prices in the last bubble didn't drop for about two years after the sales dried up. Housing moves slowly, but we have a huge percentage of investor-owned homes now, so the drop could be steeper with more owners capable of quick sales. And if things turn, he who panics first profits best. This doesn't have to happen, but the alternative is massive inflation to bring our wages up to levels that can normalize these prices. The US government will benefit massively from inflation because it will diminish the debt, but that assumes they survive the usually-associated social upheaval that follows large inflation.

She's just not that into you. The only fools are the ones who stay. It may suck to be a warrior in a time when warriors are not needed, but it sucks more to be a warrior in an organization that is openly hostile to warriors. They court martialed Billy Mitchell. Nothing changes, just the numbers on the calendar.

Apparently something like 25% of the STR homes bought in the pandemic years are on adjustable rate mortgages. That'll hurt. I think you're in ground zero. PHX, AUS, and BOI are the holy trinity of pandemic housing bubbles. That's good to hear. Debt, as always, is going to ruin a lot of lives in the next few years I think.

Maybe the best summation I've read so far of what I think will happen. The concept of "expected and unexpected inflation tax" is a bit difficult to grok, but the basic idea is that inflation will be the chosen solution eventually.

Any Airbnb landlords feeling the squeeze? I'm trying to get a sense for if there's going to be a lot of surprise inventory as the post-COVID travel boom winds down.

Investing in the possibility of a societal collapse is a losing game. Even though it's possible. Think about what happens between now and a collapse, and invest in that. Inflation will be the name of the game going forward. Not immediately, but once "something breaks" and the Fed is forced to drop rates (from political pressure), the inflation fire will be reignited. The West has been at war with fossil fuels for 20 years now, and failed to produce an alternative. The lack of investment in exploration and extraction will come back to bite us. Fossil fuels and nuclear (the only viable alternative) will probably see huge gains as constricted supply and an inflated dollar collide. If the narrative shifts to entrenched inflation, gold probably does very well. The last time tech was this elevated, it fell 80%. Real estate looks ugly too. Healthcare is hard to bet against when the largest voting block is too old to survive without medical intervention.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN Sadly, the true best-case scenario would be for rates to stay just high enough to exert such extreme pressure on the global financial system that the world is forced into a very painful, but survivable, bad-debt detox. Laughably, that rate would probably only be about 3%. Looking at the chart above, it took from the founding until 1981 to get to $1T of debt. $1T in 2023 dollars is $3.4T. But remember, a debt gets cheaper due to inflation. This fact will matter in the years ahead. It took from 1981 to 2008 to get from $1T to $10T. 27 years for $9T increase From 2008 - 2018 it went from ~$10T to ~$20T. 10 years for a 10T increase From 2018 to now it went from #20T to $33T, with an additional $1.9T of additional debt planned for the second half of 2023, so lets say ~$15T of additional debt in 6 years The trajectory is parabolic. And keep in mind, we have never had such a high deficit-to-GDP ratio outside of wartime. If the government is taking on this type with record-low unemployment and record-high tax receipts (from 2021 and 2022), what do you think it will look like when the economy just slows down a little? So, the debt is spread out over a range of Treasury bills, notes, and bonds (just called "bonds" for now) ranging from a few weeks to maturity to 30 years. Because we only exist in a deficit now, when a bond matures, the government must issue another to cover the payout of the maturing bond. In the corporate world this is called rolling over the debt. When you do this, the new bond must be issued at whatever the prevailing interest rate is. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS30 Click "max" on the chart to see the full series. You'll see that the yield on bonds has been steadily dropping for just under 40 years. That means every time the government had to pay out a bond, they were able to cover it with a cheaper bond. Imagine if every month your car payment went down through no effort of your own. You'd probably use the extra money each month to buy something else. So too did the government. The problem with a normal yield curve (the chart that shows the various interest rates of the increasing bond durations, click here) is that its usually cheaper to give out shorter-term bonds than longer term bonds. So in 2019-2020 when the government could have been issuing 30 year bonds at less than 2% to fund the government, they instead chose a whole lot of < 2year bonds yielding less than .25% (a quarter of a percent!), because lower is better, right? Well now the best rate they can get is 4%, which is devastating when you have to roll over trillions in debt from .25% to 4%. This article explains it well, but I'll include a couple highlights: "Net interest payments on the national debt rose from $352 billion in 2021 to $475 billion in 2022 — the highest nominal dollar amount in recorded history." "Much of that increase was due to higher interest rates on U.S. Treasury securities. Although borrowing rose sharply over the past few years to address the COVID-19 pandemic, interest costs were muted as a result of low interest rates." "Interest costs represented about 8 percent of total federal outlays in 2022. By 2033, that share will rise to 14 percent and will exceed programs such as defense and Medicaid." Keep in mind, the article uses CBO estimates which are grossly optimistic, and always wrong. Always. So basically, with interests rates anywhere above 1%, we have an unsustainable debt spiral. It's not just us. The EU was using negative interest rates to support their insane deficit spending. China plowed trillions into worthless ghost cities. Now you might ask, why doesn't the Fed (and other central banks) just lower interest rates if they are so devastating? Inflation. The great destroyer. Inflation is great for governments. It turns big debts into small debts. Ever wonder why the Fed targets 2% inflation instead of 0%? It's because they long ago realized that governments operating under fiat currency will never pay down their debts. But if you let inflation slowly erode the value of a dollar, you can keep the debts manageable, if you manage to keep the growth of the debt under the growth of the economy. We haven't. Unchecked inflation is the quickest way to social upheaval. Not just because people see their purchasing power decline, but because government money-printing always disproportionately goes to the already-rich and connected. Take a look here. Pay close attention to the differing slopes. Also notice that the runaway increase at the top coincides with the Fed interventions in 2002 (tech bubble popping), 2008 (quantitative easing from the Global Financial Crisis) and 2020 (Covid crash). So when inflation really comes to eat our lunch, and it hasn't yet, a 50% decrease in purchasing power is going to hit the bottom lines a lot harder than the top lines. You want a civil war? This is how you get a civil war. And overwhelmingly, all of this madness was brought to you by a federal reserve that decided that artificially-low interest rates would help government spending spur economic growth, and a congress that was all too happy to increase their spending ability through the roof, while telling the American people that it was actually good for the economy for the government to spend this way. Keynesian economics reaching it's only logical conclusion: collapse. Buckle up, kids. It's going to be an interesting decade or two.